Movies: In 'Instant Family,' director Sean Anders draws on his own life

Jody Feinberg The Patriot Ledger

Saturday

Nov 10, 2018 at 5:48 AM

When director Sean Anders pitched a movie about parents who adopt children from foster care, the studio was skeptical since he was known for his two "Daddy's Home" screwball comedies.

"They were concerned that we were somehow going to make fun of kids in the system, which of course was the opposite of what we wanted to do," said Anders.

In fact, Anders wanted to make "Instant Family," which opens Friday, because of his own experience adopting and raising three siblings with his wife, Beth. The story of Pete, played by Mark Wahlberg, and Ellie, played by Rose Byrne, closely resembles the Los Angele's couple's own challenges and joys as parents. But it has added drama and depth because their film counterparts adopt a teenage girl, rather than children ages 6 and under.

Anders wanted to cast Wahlberg, who had starred in his 2015 film "Daddy's Home" and 2017 "Daddy's Home 2," because he didn't want the film to be marketed as a "chick flick," which often happens when it's about a family.

"I think that's ridiculous, because guys love being a dad and love their dad," said Anders, who co-wrote the script with John Morris. "Mark comes across as a very regular guy. I really wanted dads who see the trailer to say, 'Oh, yah, Mark Wahlberg, I get him."

With an enthusiastic Wahlberg commited to the film, its fortunes changed. Wahlberg had promoted foster care at events in Boston and also became a co-producer of the film.

"When you have Mark Wahlberg, everybody sits up and listens," Anders said. "Once we had a pretty good draft of the script and Mark, it was a pretty easy sell."

What was harder was conveying the humor without diminishing the struggles of the new parents, as well as the loss for the children, and even their birth mother.

"I felt if it feels like we're having laugh at the expense of the kids that would be tragic, and if it feels too dour or heartbreaking or serious then that would counterproductive," said Anders, whose children were ages 6, 3 and 1 1/2 when they came to live with him nearly seven years ago. "Every adoption comes from some level of tragedy, and there's real trauma and issues to be worked out. But in my family, we laugh a lot and enjoy and love each other. I was trying to thread the needle to get the feeling I get from my own family."

Like Pete and Ellie, Anders and his wife, then age 41 and 35, decided to explore becoming adoptive parents almost by chance, after he joked that at their age, they should have older children if they wanted to be parents. Without committing themselves, they attended foster parent training classes, which in the film are led by Octavia Spencer and Tig Notaro, a comic duo with a compassionate tell-it-like-it is instruction to a diverse group of potential parents who need to discard their fantasies if they're going to succeed as foster parents.

Yet, the reality – in the film and in Ander's life – is that no parent truly understands the experience of becoming an "instant" family until they live it, he said.

"When you become foster parents, you essentially bring strangers into your home," he said. "Usually, strangers behave like house guests, but kids don't do that and shouldn't do that. It becomes incredibly overwhelming and frustrating."

In one scene, Pete and Ellie rue their decision and wonder if there's a way they can return the children into the system, at their wit's end by the rebellious, angry behavior of their teenage daughter Lizzy, played by Isabela Moner, the emotional vulnerability of their elementary school age son, Juan, and the caretaking needs of their pre-school daughter, Lita. Anders said that scene was straight out of his life.

"Our honeymoon period lasted a day," he said. "Our 3-year-old daughter had an exorcist level meltdown, and we'd never been around anything like that. The next months were really difficult, and it wasn't just about the behavior of the kids. We just weren't used to the mess, the schedules, having to think on our feel and making all kinds of mistakes."

Instead, they were used to getting along, rather than arguing with each other.

"Pete and Ellie are very much in love but are overwhelmed, which is what we were," he said. "We didn't want to portray a battling husband and wife, which is a standard Hollywood thing. We disagreed, but we supported each other."

A turning point came for Anders after about six months when he awoke to a quiet house because his kids had slept late and he missed them.

"I was actually excited for them to come in here and wake us up, and when I realized that I knew I had turned a corner," he said.

Anders wanted a teenage adoption in his film because teenagers face the hardest time finding people who want to adopt them, typically going from one foster home to another until they become age 18 and are left on their own, where about 20 percent become homeless. The trajectory of Lizzie provides some of the most insightful and moving scenes in the film, which reflect the understanding Anders gained by consulting with the social worker who worked with him on his adoptions.

At one point, a despairing Pete and Ellie go to the home of the couple who had talked in the foster care training about the turnaround in the troubled teenage girl they had adopted.

"They get a hard dose of reality, instead of a pep talk, which turns out to be exactly what they needed," Anders said. "It's one of my favorite scenes, because it's very funny but also an important moment because it conveys the idea that family is an ongoing process. It's not that you just figure it out and then everything is rosy from then on."

At a pre-release screening in Boston last month for scores of foster and adoptive parents and their children, as well as the professionals who work with them, a number of parents and children appreciatively told Anders the film captured the complexity of their relationships both accurately and entertainingly. They stood in line after to have their photo taken with him. By then, Anders had shed the worry he had when he first screened the film to a similar group in Minnesota.

"It was really terrifying because they came in with skepticism that was palpable," he said. "For them to accept and even love it was honestly one of the best moments of my career."

Reach Jody Feinberg at jfeinberg@patriotledger.com. Follow her on Twitter@JodyF_Ledger.